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Feeble   /fˈibəl/   Listen
Feeble

adjective
(compar. feebler; superl. feeblest)
1.
Pathetically lacking in force or effectiveness.  Synonym: lame.  "A lame argument"
2.
Lacking strength or vigor.  Synonym: faint.  "Faint resistance" , "Feeble efforts" , "A feeble voice"
3.
Lacking bodily or muscular strength or vitality.  Synonyms: debile, decrepit, infirm, rickety, sapless, weak, weakly.  "Her body looked sapless"
4.
Lacking strength.  Synonym: nerveless.



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"Feeble" Quotes from Famous Books



... the life of a feeble convalescent. She ought to have had change of air, but that was out of the question, for Mr. Rymer's business was as unremunerative as ever, and with difficulty he provided the household with food. One gleam of light kept up the courage of the family: the aged ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... such an occasion the experienced commuter makes the best of a bad job, knowing there is little to be gained by trying to cherish and succour a feeble remnant of fire. He will manfully jettison the whole business, filling the cellar with the crash of shunting ashes and the clatter of splitting kindling. But this pitiable creature still thought that mayhap he could, by sedulous care and coaxing, revive ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... touch. The characters are second-rate middle class, instead of being dukes and millionaires. The heroine gets kicked through the mud: real mud. Theres no plot. All the old stage conventions and puppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment. And a feeble air of intellectual pretentiousness kept up all through to persuade you that if the author hasnt written a good play it's because hes too clever to stoop to anything so commonplace. And you three ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... sacred. She had no jury to whose manhood she could appeal, and John Winthrop, to his lasting shame, was to prosecute her from the judgment seat. She was soon to become a mother, and her health was feeble, but she was made to stand till she was exhausted; and yet, abandoned and forlorn, before those merciless judges, through two long, weary days of hunger and of cold, the intrepid woman defended her cause with a skill and courage which even now, after two hundred and fifty years, kindles ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... were fast drawing to a close. On the fourth of April, 1417, the Dauphin John died by poisoning, in his father's castle at Compiegne—the victim of those terrible and relentless feuds that were then disgracing and endangering the feeble throne of France. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... In a moment a feeble gaslight shone, disclosing Aphrodite—somewhat disarranged by the panic—standing smiling in front of the erstwhile Voodoo. She looked down at his feet. There, sure enough, one huge member was unshod and stockingless; ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... offend any man however feeble his situation: you know not how soon his personal interest may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... are," said Mrs. Batcheller. "The Judge and I had a long talk together, the day he came down, and he wants you to go away to school with Judy, and have me come and help Aunt Patterson to manage his house. He says she is too feeble for so much care and that it will be ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... and devotee of Bunyan and Spenser, the great masters of allegory. But it is apt to spoil two good things—a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeble writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in which it is endurable is when it is extremely spontaneous, when the analogy presents itself with eager promptitude. When it shows signs of having been ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... putting a feeble hand to her dazed eyes. "You ain' ole miss come back agin, is you, honey?" she ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... smallpox, for instance, was a disease introduced by the Spaniards, which the comparatively feeble constitution of the Indians ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... favor of this singular claimant of hospitality. The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted. Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames; the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of answer ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... descriptions furnished by the town. 'He has,' said the paper, 'a low forehead, squinting eyes, a shifty glance, crow's-feet, sharp cheek-bones, red and shining. No rims to the ears. Thin, somewhat bent, feeble in appearance, in reality he is unusually strong. He easily bends a five-franc piece between the first finger and the thumb.' There were good reasons for attributing to him a long series of robberies committed with surprising dexterity. The ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France

... does not know that in every case this making a decision is an internal labor, a genuine effort; so much so that persons of feeble will try to avoid it, as a thing irksome to them. If possible, the mistress of the house will leave the decisions to the cook, and to a dressmaker all the arguments necessary to make one of the many motives that come into play ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... left the coast than troubles and perils thickened around them. The country was difficult to traverse, the people were bold and hostile. With their poisoned arrows they proved no feeble antagonists. As the adventurers left the plain and toiled up the mountains, a warlike cacique, with a large body of followers, met them in a narrow pass and boldly disputed the way. A fierce battle ensued, ending in favor of the Spaniards, who cut their ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... occasional grunt, and a few unintelligible words. He refused nourishment, was untidy in habits, and appeared to be wholly oblivious to his environment. Respiratory and cardiac action somewhat accelerated, pulse rapid and feeble. ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... open-mindedness, in the resolutely impersonal treatment of personal problems, which no other training can compensate. He is, for the most part, condemned to live in a mental jungle where his arm will soon be too feeble to clear away the growths that enclose him, and his eyes too weak to find the light." The man who has allowed his mental capacities to clear his way through the dense underbrush of religious dogma finds that he has emerged into a purer and healthier ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... of note, at this miserable pass, who was true to his country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against its Danish besiegers; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in chains, 'I will not buy my life with ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... first five-act comedy which Meilhac and Halevy wrote together, and which was brought out in 1868. The final situation is one of truth and immense effectiveness, and there is great vigor in the creation of character. The decrepit old rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly and wandering in helplessness, but irresistible when aroused, is a striking figure; and still more striking is the portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress—a woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... with those severe wounds inflicted by this merciless tyrant, this infernal scourge of the human race. Intemperance is a monster that may well be personified. He frolicks through the blood, preys upon the vitals, ploughs up the brain, dethrones reason and laughs at the feeble resistance of the best constitution, and finally bears down all opposition before him. Like the devouring flame, he presses on with irresistible force, urging his deadly siege, till he consumes all that is fair and lovely in the eye of virtue. ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... mere loss of the paper on which it was written would not be any real loss to him at all! It is only fair to Gottlieb's good angel to state that during this able presentment of the wrong side of the case he did venture to hint once or twice—in the feeble, perfunctory sort of way that unfortunately seems to be characteristic of good angels when their services really are most urgently required—that the whole matter might be compromised satisfactorily to all the parties in interest by permitting Hans to marry Minna, and ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... and feeble as they were, broke forth in hoarse cheers and incoherent shouts, which died ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... name the book which now stood open in my hand, and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely—for it was a book which has exerted over the minds of Englishmen an influence certainly greater than any other of modern times—which has been in most people's hands, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... men, however taken up they be with life's distracting cares, have, at least, their sadder moments. In the dark wintry morning, in the night that comes on so swift to swallow us up in its shadow, ten years, nay, twenty years hence, strange feeble voices will rise up in your heart: "Good morning, dear friend, 'tis we! You are alive, are working as hard as ever. So much the better! You do not feel our loss so heavily, and you have learned to do without us; but we cannot, we never can, do without you. The ranks are closed, the gap ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... officer might bestow on the bows and arrows of the Chinese. In another department there were models of vehicles and vessels worked by steam, and of an air-balloon which might have been constructed by Montgolfier. "Such," said Zee, with an air of meditative wisdom—"such were the feeble triflings with nature of our savage forefathers, ere they had even a glimmering perception ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... notions of even American temerity. But upon the memorable 26th of June, 1782, the "Repudiator" sailed out of Havre Roads in a thick fog, under cover of which she entered and cast anchor in Bonchurch Bay, in the Isle of Wight. To surprise the Martello Tower and take the feeble garrison thereunder, was the work of Tom Coxswain and a few of his blue-jackets. The surprised garrison laid down their ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... toward and drawing her away from the man whom she loved and whom she admired for his heroism and loyalty, rending her with remorse and overwhelming her as though it were a crime, had ended by delivering her, feeble and disabled, to the diabolical influence of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... spend too much time in the reveries of imagination, for this is a working-day world, my child. Even the birds have to build their nests, and the coral insect is a mighty laborer. The gift of song is sweet, and may be made an instrument of the Creator's glory. The first notes of the lark are feeble, compared to his heaven-high strains. The fainter dawn ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... not inquire too curiously into motives. They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... thing that counts seems to be the most heedless use of power. Darwinism, it was said, has proclaimed brutality. No other difference seems permanent save that between the sound, powerful and happy on the one side, the sick, feeble and unhappy on the other; and every attempt to alleviate this difference seems to lead to general enervation. Some of those who interpreted Darwinism in this manner felt an aesthetic delight in contemplating the heedlessness and energy of the great struggle for existence and anticipated ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... necessary; I will see that you are well satisfied for your services. Of course the captain himself should have stayed there and kept charge, but you remember he was sick and had to resign. He looks feeble yet. I hope nothing will happen to him before the matter is settled up, but we are sure of the trial ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Once freed from the cares of a family, she has resumed her wandering life among the trees and along the roofs. In vain I have kept away from my window, to take from her every excuse for fear; in vain the feeble little bird has called to her with plaintive cries; his bad mother has passed by, singing and fluttering with a thousand airs and graces. Once only the father came near; he looked at his offspring with contempt, and then disappeared, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... so many of you are living are a shame to your manhood, to say nothing more. God has made us for something else than that we should thus be the sport of circumstances. It is a disgrace to any of us that our lives should be like some little fishing-boat, with an unskilful or feeble hand at the tiller, yawing from one point of the compass to another, and not keeping a straight and direct course. I pray you, dear brethren, to front this question: 'After all, and at bottom, what is it I am living for? Can I formulate the aims and purposes of my life in any intelligible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... alternating color and paleness, showing itself in his haggard face. "I wish I was the ground she treads on! I wish I was the glove she's got on her hand!" He burst ecstatically into those extravagant words, with a concentrated intensity of delight in uttering them that actually shook his feeble figure ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... was unarmed, and too feeble to pursue the dreadful beast. He could only wring his hands and rend his grey hairs in grief and terror; but his lamentations would not restore the child to life. A band of hunters and lumberers, armed with rifles ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... in this analysis of the opinions entertained by the red race on a future life is the clear and positive hope of a hereafter, in such strong contrast to the feeble and vague notions of the ancient Israelites, Greeks, and Romans, and yet the entire inertness of this hope in leading them to a purer moral life. It offers another proof that the fulfilment of duty is in its nature nowise connected with or derived from a consideration of ultimate personal ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... The feeble voice interrupted her: 'My servant!—you my servant! when, instead of rewarding your services, I allow you to toil for my support, and to lavish upon me the most tender, the most devoted affection! My poor Margaret! you who ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... Alison looks down upon her, just because she wasn't quite—no, she was quite a lady—but because she wasn't at all grand. And there's some excuse for her, because she didn't know her. But for us it would be too horrid, when she was so good to us, even all those years she was so suffering and feeble. And then, for Uncle Manny's ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... scandal successfully afloat, the society papers began to utter a feeble protest against it—thus increasing their own reputation for a refined morality. But they had no power to turn the tide, and the scandal floated on. In society itself judgment was divided. Whether "Laura" was or was not a work ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... and in no matter how exalted a strain I might sound his praises, I should still feel that in your hearts you were convinced that I deserved the reproach of falling far short of doing him justice. An orator, feeble as he is, can not do anything for the perpetuation of the glory of extraordinary souls. Le Sage was right when he said that "their deeds alone can praise them"; no other praise is of any effect where great names are concerned; and it needs ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... of you fellows hold him back too?" she cried. "He likes nothing better than not to be let go. Don't you see what a business he makes of it to rid himself of that feeble old man, whom he could throw to the ground with half a hand if he had a mind to. Get out of my way, will you? Men are out of place in a joke of this sort. My mother was a witch and I'm one also. Do you know that I can open every door ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... the rest of the day and the night that followed. By this time I found my strength gone, and was despairing of my life, when happily a wave threw me against an island. The bank was high and rugged, but some roots of trees helped me to get up. When the sun arose, I was very feeble, but managed to find some herbs that were fit to eat, and a spring of good water. Thus refreshed, I advanced farther into the island, and reached a fine plain, where I saw some horses feeding. As ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... rent his doublet; but he swerved aside and escaped black death. Then both together with their hands plucked forth their long spears and fell to like ravening lions or wild boars whose might is nowise feeble. Then Priam's son smote the shield's midst with his dart, but the bronze brake not through, for the point turned back; but Aias leapt on him and pierced his buckler, and straight through went the spear and staggered him in his onset, and cleft its way unto his neck, so that the dark blood ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... tradition, however, sucked in from a credulous parent with much similar folly at a time when the mind accepts impressions most readily, was too strong for Joan. Qualms she had, and some whisper at the bottom of her mind was heard with a clearness sufficient to make her uncomfortable, but reason held a feeble citadel at best in Joan's mind. The whisper died, memory spoke of the notable value which wise men through long past years had placed upon this charm, and in the face of the future it seemed wicked to reject a thing of such proven efficacy. So she picked up the adder's slough, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... YANOSKI was born at Lons-le-Saulnier, France, March 9, 1813, and died at Paris early in February last. Though not known much out of his own country, few literary men have possessed more admirable and substantial qualities. He was feeble in bodily powers, but endowed with indefatigable ardor in the pursuit of intellectual objects, and a mind at once penetrating and judicious. He was educated in the College of Versailles. In 1836 he became a tutor in history at the University at Paris. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... is so feeble that I should gladly pass it by, did I not know from past experience that the very opposite motive would be assigned to my doing so. Ihad stated that if there is a terra incognita which excludes all positive knowledge, it is the mind of animals. How, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... rapid progress towards returning health and strength, having suffered no more serious injuries than the breaking of an arm and two or three ribs. To the astonishment, however, and perplexity of the hospital officials, the signor has managed to leave the premises unobserved, and in his still feeble condition, and with his arm yet in a sling, to get clear away, so that no one had any idea what had become of him. The reason, however, of this move on his part is becoming pretty plain, for it is now being more than whispered about that Signor Telitetti is no foreigner after all, but that this name ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... standing on the seats or on the box, holding up their lights at arms' length, for greater safety; some in paper shades; some with a bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled altogether; some with blazing torches; some with feeble little candles; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels, watching their opportunity, to make a spring at some particular light, and dash it out; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main force; others, chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... with astounded eyes, upon the mighty ocean that lay beyond,—the world's greatest sea. Magellan, in 1520, sailed round the continent at its southern extremity, and turned his daring prows into that world of waters of seemingly illimitable width. But the route thus laid out was far too long for the feeble commerce of that early day, and various efforts were made to pass the line of the continent at some northern point. The great rivers of North America, the James, the Hudson, and others, were explored in the eager hope that they might prove to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... had been counted, while his thin hair, brushed carefully over his bald head, had not a lock to spare; and even his large, sharp bones were covered with only just enough flesh to hold them comfortably together. He had stood there till his eye was dim and his step feeble, and though he had, for twenty years—when handing in each semiannual trial balance to the head of the house—declared that was his last, everybody said he would continue to stand there till his own trial balance ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... warriors appeared in the forest, walking a little distance back from the stream, where they could see on the farther bank, and yet not be seen from it. The moon was still obscured, but a portion of its light fell directly upon Tandakora, and Robert had never beheld a more sinister figure. The rays, feeble, were yet strong enough to show his gigantic figure, naked save for the breech cloth, and painted horribly. His eyes, moreover, were lighted up either in fact or in Robert's fancy with a most wicked gleam, as if he ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Frenchman, Balzac. Since I have no desire to provoke squabbles about favorite authors, let us merely definitely agree that such a comparison is absurd and pass on. Because you must have noticed that Balzac was often feeble in his reason and couldn't make it keep step with his instinct, while in Thackeray they both step together like the Siamese twins. It is a very striking fact, indeed, that during all Becky's intense early experiences with the great world, Thackeray does not make her guilty. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... cannot be cruel"? This kind of people need not detain us long. Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended the principles of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer "Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to persons without a trace of lunacy." This lucid politician finds an old law, let us say, about ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... arrived for you to ask of the Great Spirit this "reverence" i.e., the sanctity of this degree. I am interceding in your behalf, but you think my powers are feeble; I am asking him to confer upon you the sacred powers. He may cause many to die, but I shall henceforth watch your course of success in life, and learn if he will heed your prayers and ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... the idea that, in course of time, he would pass away, and that we two should be left to comfort each other as well as we might. But I, who had heard my friend speak of the coming years, could not forget the picture he had drawn of two aged and feeble people, looked up to in love and veneration by a fresh and hearty ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... I believe he does all he can do; all I object against him is that he promises more than he can perform, and promises with the determination of not performing it. The Perseverance is a fine vessel. Her power of two forty-horses will, however, be feeble. I suspect you are not quite aware of the delay which will take place." Lord Cochrane soon became quite aware of the delay, but was unable to prevent it, and the next few months were passed by him in ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... acquainted with human nature only as it appears in our island. What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other Bengalees. The physical organisation of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not gained the crown of the slope, when he heard a sudden scuffle behind him and a feeble voice bleating for help. Looking round, there was the old dame down upon the roadway, with her red whimple flying on the breeze, while the two rogues, black and white, stooped over her, wresting away from ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... exhorted him to take courage, he recollected him, opened his eyes, and gave him a look that sufficiently declared the greatness of his affliction, infinitely beyond what he felt after he first saw Schemselnihar. He grasped him by the hand, to testify his friendship, and told him, in a feeble voice, that he was extremely obliged to him for coming so far to visit one so unhappy ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... busy with their own careers, their own advancement, occupied, perhaps, about the good of the country; the sisters are engrossed in a round of other interests. All the members of such a family live disunited, forgetting one another, bound together only by some feeble tie of memory, until, perhaps, a sentiment of pride or self-interest either joins them or separates them in heart as they already are in fact. Modern laws, by multiplying the family by the family, has created ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... little slender, erect figure, with the fierce determination in its heart, through the snow and sleet, holding the blanket close over its head, and swinging the feeble ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... cell into which he was thus introduced, Glossin's feeble light for some time enabled him to discover nothing. At length he could dimly distinguish the pallet-bed stretched on the floor beside the great iron bar which traversed the room, and on that pallet reposed the figure of a man. Glossin approached ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... of the British colonies," he said, "no Governor has ever been placed in greater difficulties. In spite of a support of the most shamelessly feeble character, and in spite of a want of understanding at home, His Excellency has not only had to originate and carry out a policy, but he has had to instruct the whole nation in the dangers which threatened; and the means which were necessary ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... in early youth had sown wild oats in unworthy company. Helped by a superb model, and in full sympathy with his theme, Shakespeare might be expected to paint a magnificent picture. But Prince Henry is anything but a great portrait; he is at first hardly more than a prig, and later a feeble and colourless replica of Hotspur. It is very curious that even in the comedy scenes with Falstaff Shakespeare has never taken the trouble to realize the Prince: he often lends him his own word-wit, and now and then his own high intelligence, but he never for ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... turned uneasily on his rugs some time afterward, even this feeble light was gone. The ex-governor was consumed with a burning thirst. He had an undeniable craving for champagne and iced claret, but in the unavoidable absence of these drinks water ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... experienced officers; but the God of armies avenged the innocent blood shed in Leicester, and the royal army was cut to pieces; carriages, cannon, the king's cabinet, full of treasonable correspondence, were taken, and from that day he made feeble fight, and soon lost his crown and his life. The conquerors marched to Leicester, which surrendered by capitulation. Heath, in his Chronicle, asserts that 'no life was lost at the retaking of Leicester.' Many of Bunyan's sayings and proverbs are strongly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... could have saved us. It has been simply miraculous. Again and again have the Germans hurled themselves upon us, only to fail. There are signs now that their attacks are weakening, and their defence more feeble. If we only had more men, we could put them to rout and that right quickly. That is our great need. More men like the London Scottish, who have ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... their faces. I could not help remembering what Miss West had just told me—that ships always sailed with several lunatics or idiots in their crews. But these looked as if they were all lunatic or feeble-minded. And I, too, wondered where such a mass of human wreckage could have been obtained. There was something wrong with all of them. Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and almost without exception they were ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... Weak and feeble states like those of Central America may not feel themselves able to assert and vindicate their rights. The case would be far different if expeditions were set on foot within our own territories to make private war against a powerful nation. If such expeditions ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... river in his flight, and Sebastian, as his body was never found, probably perished in the same manner. But where the region of historical certainty ends, that of romantic tradition commences. The Portuguese, to whom the memory of their warlike sovereign was deservedly dear, grasped at the feeble hope which the uncertainty of his fate afforded, and long, with vain fondness, expected the return of Sebastian, to free them from the yoke of Spain. This mysterious termination of a hero's career, as it ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... and he more than hints to her that the dim, vague labours and accumulations of years which have constituted her husband's nearest approach to life have been labour in vain; that the "great mind" has been toiling, with feeble uncertain steps, in a path which has already been trodden into firmness and completeness; toiling in wilful and obdurate ignorance that other and abler natures have more than anticipated all he has been painfully and abortively labouring to accomplish. Again a cry bursts from the wounded ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... peril. As the boxes and demijohns were brought forward and put down the mob began to grow excited at the thought of the drink. She foresaw trouble and disaster, but though her voice was now too feeble to be heard in the babel of sound, she was not yet at the end of her resources. Divesting herself of as many of her garments as was possible, she threw them over the stuff, thus giving it the protection of her own ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... in the Hrlfssaga of Bjarki's slaying the winged monster as a reflection, though a feeble one, of ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson

... move some of the bales, but all my efforts were unavailing. I then, carrying the handspike with me, went to the bulkhead at the other end of my prison, and endeavoured by repeated blows to knock in a plank. They were all too stout to give way to my apparently feeble efforts. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... Sir Henry Hudson was by no means a good disciplinarian. The authority he exercised over his crew, was very feeble. A mutinous spirit began already to prevail, and we are told that they threatened him savagely. It would appear that Sir Henry and his mate wished to repair to Newfoundland, and after having passed the winter, which was close upon them, there to resume their voyage, in search of a northwest passage, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... of examining her. Suddenly she opened her drooping lids, and casting a look that was still misty at M. Coignard and me, she began in a feeble voice, but with the tone and accent, I thought, of ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... time these confused and frightful noises were succeeded by a perfect silence; and now a voice, not heard before, seemed to manifest the arrival of a new character in the tent. This was low and feeble, resembling the cry of a young puppy. The sound was no sooner distinguished than all the Indians clapped their hands for joy, exclaiming that this was the Chief Spirit, the Turtle, the Spirit that ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... the stair was an anteroom, with boxes and trunks, which bore marks of having been rifled, as some of the contents lay on the floor. A lamp, dying in the chimney, shed a feeble beam on a dead or senseless man who ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... pastures, certainly run about on it, with wet naked feet from the bathing; but the boy was not conscious of it. This was the first, when the desire came to identify and to know, fixing upon it by means of a pale and feeble picture. In the largest pasture there were different soils and climates; it was so large it seemed a little country of itself then—the more so because the ground rose and fell, making a ridge to divide the view and enlarge by uncertainty. The high sandy soil on the ridge where ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... Waring, however. When they had had their say, the colonel arose, and, curtly reminding them that they had really had no hand in the business, proposed three cheers for the citizen effort that had struck the slum this staggering blow. There was rather a feeble response on the platform, but rousing cheers from the crowd, with whom the colonel was a prime favorite, and no wonder. Two years later he laid down his life in the fight which he so valiantly and successfully waged. It is the simple truth ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... asleep. Poor, querulous, feeble-minded Felix, with a foul fistula, which filled the whole ward with its odour. In one sleeping hand lay his little round mirror, in the other, he clutched his comb. With daylight, he would trim and comb his moustache, his poor, little drooping moustache, ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... with flashing eyes, and pulled the trigger. A feeble click followed, another, and again! Even THIS had mocked him. He pulled the trigger once more, wildly; there was a sudden explosion, and another. He stepped back; the balls had apparently flattened themselves harmlessly on the bull's forehead. He pulled again, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... headed, and he wrecked his own cause. The Dutchman is a different sort of man altogether, and one thing is certain: if King James can make a mess of matters, he is sure to do so. The Stuarts have always been feeble and indecisive, and James is the most feeble and indecisive of them. If William succeeds in effecting a landing, I think his chance of success ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... me that I may live of his favour. And I render my homage to the mistress of the land, who is in his palace; may I hear the news of her children. Thus will my limbs grow young again. Now old age comes, feebleness seizes me, my eyes are heavy, my arms are feeble, my legs will not move, my heart is slow. Death draws nigh to me, soon shall they lead me to the city of eternity. Let me follow the mistress of all (the queen, his former mistress); lo! let her tell me the ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... old man cried out: 'No, it was not that; it was because we were dull of hearing.' The fact was, that the seam was not only thick, but very hard. It was strange, indeed, though sounds are easily transmitted through rocks of considerable thickness, how our feeble taps had been heard at all. Day after day, and each day a black night, went on; every hour was to be the last of our captivity, according to the old man; as for me, I was almost worn out, and heavy with sleep, but ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... and calm the temper. I am witness to the fact that no one among the Hofwyl students was injured by them in any way, and that very many acquired a strength and an address that astonished themselves. I myself had been in feeble health for several years before my arrival; yet I left Hofwyl, not only perfectly well, but athletic; and I have not had a serious illness since. I cannot believe, that, under a well-regulated system, gymnastics cause injury ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... The feeble radiance traveled round the little room, showing the rent, board walls and the beams rough from the saw that supported the cedar roofing shingles. A little snow had sifted in and lay on the floor; there was a rusty stove at one end, but no ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... bandit when he arrives. But I do not ask or expect the restoration of such a few trifling things. In this country, as the Governor says, "full of Sheiks," where authority is so divided, and the Sultan's power is so feeble, we must expect this sort of freebooting extortion. Such were the good and fine old days of chivalry in France and England, so much regretted by certain morbid romancers, Sir Walter Scott to boot, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... could have heard them, her small ears—burning with the transition from cold air to warm, as in the kitchen she hurriedly forced Mary Ann, protesting with feeble giggles, into whatsoever garments could be adapted to the purpose—would have burned even more fiercely. But it is quite safe to say that she had no thought whatever of the effect her impulsive little act might have upon anybody—except ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... twenty-five hundred feet, seeming to us almost perpendicular on both sides. It was the narrowest deep chasm we had yet seen, and beneath these majestic cliffs we ourselves appeared mere pigmies, creeping about with our feeble strength to overcome the tremendous difficulties. The loud reverberation of the roaring water, the rugged rocks, the toppling walls, the narrow sky, all combined to make this a fearful place, which no ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... was no lull in the conversation; for Winnie, once started on school reminiscences, filled all gaps to overflowing; and Sammy Chirp, he of the feeble smile, whose diffidence had denied him the gift of language, gazed on her in rapt ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... was in the Macoushi country, there was a capital trick played upon me about india-rubber. It is, almost too good to be left out of these wanderings, and it shows that the wild and uneducated Indian is not without abilities. Weary and sick and feeble through loss of blood, I arrived at some Indian huts which were about two hours distant from the place where the gum-elastic trees grew. After a day and a night's rest I went to them, and with my own hands made a fine ball of pure india-rubber; it hardened immediately as it became exposed ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... your two wires, though the first one—"So happy, but who is it?" was a bit feeble-minded, you must admit. Could you imagine me marrying any one in the wide world but Michael Daragh? Haven't I always intended to (no matter what I may have babbled of a man-I-met-on-the-boat, or of an extremely civil engineer!) from the first instant I set my wishful ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... said the baroness; "I only request your consideration. Whatever your decision be, our warmest gratitude will still be yours; if you are unable to uphold our feeble strength, I fear that we shall find no one to do so. You will think of that," ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... seemed to care about Mexico's good name in the world at large. Maltreated Americans demanded punishment of the Mexican offenders, but the United States had been engaged in patiently waiting and watching, only once in a while sending a feeble protest either to the Federal or the Constitutionalist leaders in that ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock

... a rigid necessity. The first concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled and stripped of the parts which were necessary to make out their just correspondence and connection in trade, were of no use. The next year a feeble attempt was made to bring the thing into better shape. This attempt, (countenanced by the minister,) on the very first appearance of some popular uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the House, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... his lantern above his head. As its feeble rays fell upon the face and uniform of the man on horseback, the sentry gave a little gasp ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... conflict with the pow'rs of night, To vanquish satan in the fields of light? Who strung thy feeble arms with might unknown, How great thy conquest, and how bright thy crown! War with each princedom, throne, and pow'r is o'er, The scene is ended to return no more. O could my muse thy seat on high behold, How deckt with laurel, how enrich'd with gold! O could ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... him; and he spent his pennies for catgut, and he learned to mend fiddle-strings; and finally came a proud Wednesday afternoon when there were visitors in Madame's school, and he stood on the platform, with Miss Acton playing an accompaniment on the baby grand piano, and he managed a feeble but true tune on his violin. It was all for little Lucy, but little Lucy cared no more for music than his mother; and while Jim was playing she was rehearsing in the depths of her mind the little poem which later ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... came for obtaining an expression of opinion from the people at the polls. When parliament met in June, 1847, it was quite clear that the ministry was on the eve of its downfall. It was sustained only by a feeble majority of two votes on the motion for the adoption of the address to the governor-general. The opposition, in which LaFontaine, Baldwin, Aylwin, and Chauveau were the most prominent figures, had clearly the best of the argument in the political controversies ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... wishing to perfect His work, and, in my blindness, I thought that in the admirable chain of laws which preside over life at the surface of the earth, and maintain it ever in freshness, there was wanting a link which I, feeble and impotent worm, was to supply. Provision had been made for this beforehand, but in a way so wonderful, that the possibility of such a law had not so much as dawned upon the human understanding."[112] Here ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... FLY-POWDER.—Symptoms: Heat and pain in the. Throat and stomach, violent retching and vomiting, cold and clammy skin, small and feeble pulse, hurried and difficult breathing, diarrhoea, etc.—Treatment: An emetic, followed by the free administration of milk, eggs, wheat flour ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... looked merry enough in the old episcopal city. There were few towns in Lower or in Upper Germany more elegant and imposing than Utrecht. Situate on the slender and feeble channel of the ancient Rhine as it falters languidly to the sea, surrounded by trim gardens and orchards, and embowered in groves of beeches and limetrees, with busy canals fringed with poplars, lined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... temporary home had become scarce, and the hallways, lighted only by kerosene lamps turned low, were plunged in gloom, Elizabeth Willard had an adventure. She had been ill in bed for several days and her son had not come to visit her. She was alarmed. The feeble blaze of life that remained in her body was blown into a flame by her anxiety and she crept out of bed, dressed and hurried along the hallway toward her son's room, shaking with exaggerated fears. As she went along she steadied herself with her hand, slipped along the papered walls of ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... crouched for warmth and the shadow of comfort over a miserable fire. The dogs were beyond, herded far within the shelter, their fierce eyes agleam with a reflection of the feeble firelight as they gazed out hungrily in its direction. It was a cavernous break in the rock-bound confines of a nameless ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... side. The young Arab immediately rose, and lifting his rifle, pointed it at the foremost of the savages. A fight appeared imminent. Should Sayd or Sambroko fire, the next instant the blacks would be upon them, and the rest of the party, having only their axes or knives, could offer but a feeble resistance. The intruders held their ground in spite of the warning shouts of Sayd and Sambroko. Ned, unwilling to die without attempting to strike a blow, was crawling towards the arms to possess himself of a musket, when one of the savages raised his spear ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... looks of the mother; "I would not take him to meet the Danes, but there is less danger in these dainty Frenchmen. The grandson of Alfgar should be encouraged, not restrained, when he seeks to play the man, even as we repress not, but stimulate the first feeble attempts of the young falcon to strike ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... go on, but stood before her unmanned. In the feeble light his face was wan and his hurt shoulder, still in bandages, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... fact, the characteristic of love being self-abasement, if all souls resembled the holy Doctors who have illuminated the Church, it seems that God in coming to them would not stoop low enough. But He has created the little child, who knows nothing and can but utter feeble cries, and the poor savage who has only the natural law to guide him, and it is to their hearts that He deigns to stoop. These are the field flowers whose simplicity charms Him; and by His condescension to them Our Saviour shows His infinite ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... Senate, but the people believed that he was envious of Scipio's prosperity and desired to check him, because he feared that if he did gain some signal success, and either put an end to the war altogether or remove it from Italy, he himself might be thought a feeble and dilatory general for not having finished the war in ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... treacherous pursuer has marched toward Bothwell, too sure to commit the horrid violence he meditates; there are none to guard my child but a few domestics, the unpracticed sword of my stripling nephew, and the feeble ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... rare cases, and that the great things in the realms of art, music, and literature are very largely the monopoly of the few, and these mainly of the leisured classes. Hence the appeal of idealism to certain types of men and women must necessarily be a feeble one. ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... the post-office I found a letter addressed to me. I opened it and—" He hesitated, and uneasily shifted his weight from one foot to the other, with a feeble, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... Mynheer Poots, when coming home, had heard the report of fire-arms in the direction of his own house. The recollection of his daughter and of his money—for to do him justice he did love her best—had lent him wings; he forgot that he was a feeble old man and without arms; all he thought of was to gain his habitation. On he came, reckless, frantic, and shouting, and rushed into the arms of the two robbers, who seized and would have despatched him, had not Philip so opportunely come ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... on the briars, And from the clammy ground suspires A sweet frail sick autumnal scent Of stale frost furring weeds long spent; And wafted on, like one who sleeps, A feeble vapour hangs or creeps, Exhaling on the fungus mould A breath of age, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... Link, a halfpenny weekly, the spirit of which was described in its motto, taken from Victor Hugo: "The people are silence. I will be the advocate of this silence. I will speak for the dumb. I will speak of the small to the great and of the feeble to the strong.... I will speak for all the despairing silent ones. I will interpret this stammering; I will interpret the grumblings, the murmurs, the tumults of crowds, the complaints ill-pronounced, and all these cries ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... signs which all his doubts explain, His heart within him melts; his knees sustain Their feeble weight no more; his arms alone Support him, round the loved Ulysses thrown: He faints, he sinks, with mighty joys oppress'd: Ulysses clasps him to his ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... less note came one frail form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Aclaeon-like, and now he fled astray, With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued, like raging hounds, their ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... pretty presents Tom has brought us and you. See here's a beautiful new coat hanging on your peg for you, and Molly and Polly are as gay as any ladies," and she led him, tottering and feeble, to the loaded table—no longer ashamed of its defaced back beneath the ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... on she and her mistress, drawn together by one common interest, became really attached to each other; the baby's crumpled red hand, which could just hold one of Biddy's fingers, kept her a willing prisoner in its feeble yet mighty grasp, and all went on well. For Mrs Roy was not disappointed in her hope of finding her little nurse a support and comfort, and valued her opinion highly with regard to the baby's ailments; true, it was sometimes ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... me what a splendid thing it would be if, instead of doing nothing with murdewers but kill 'em, they dwew off their blood while it was still warm and pumped it into famous men, gweat generals and people like that, who were getting old and feeble. Most murdewers are thundewing ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... extensive; the climate of Maryland is temperate and genial; education is free, and advanced; the John Hopkins University is in Baltimore; there is a State college in every county, and schools for blind, deaf, and feeble-minded children; colonisation began in 1634, and a policy of religious toleration and peace with the Indians led to prosperity; the State was active in the War of Independence, and remained with the North in the Civil War; the capital is Annapolis ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... confiding familiarity. He had been a fine animal, of middle size and a chestnut colour, but latterly he exhibited an interesting specimen of natural decay, in a state as nearly that of nature as can well be found in a civilised country. He had lost an eye from age, and had become lean and feeble, and, in the manner in which he approached even a casual visiter, there was something of the demand of sympathy, the appeal to human kindness, which one has so often observed from a very old dog towards his master. Poor Copenhagen, who, when alive, furnished so many reliques from his mane and ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford

... back if you prefer it," answered Maggie, half playfully; and turning round she leaned her head against the feeble knees of Hagar. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... of his people. The abandoned wickedness of Gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which Jahveh had suffered at the hands of His people. Israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant: "The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... feeble by the side of the bliss which we two have known—not like mortal men, but like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... be not the basis of all worthy knowledge our civilization is a fraud. Individual philanthropy has done much towards aiding in the matter of education, particularly so-called higher education. May not individual wealth help to minimize ignorance, dissipate poverty, help the feeble in mind and morals of the race to robust Christian manhood? "For many men of great possessions, the voice of conscience is effective, as the contemplated grasp of the tax-gatherer could never be. Around them they ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... passages were theirs however, who in that stormy December night first trod that pleasant shore, but rather the sternest realities of life and death, as with numb and icy fingers they struck a light and sheltered the feeble blaze loth to catch upon the wet twigs and leaves ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... quiet except the feeble cry of a little girl who had been born. Born in a house of vice, what will became of it and its child-mother? I such were my thoughts then, and now, after many years, I can tell the reader what has become of them, of some ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... Mrs. Dyson's reply, to which an unfriendly critic might have replied that she did not apparently know with anything like certainty what she had been doing during the last three or four years. In commenting on the trial the following day, the Times stigmatised as "feeble" the prevarications by which Mrs. Dyson tried to explain away her intimacy with Peace. In this part of his cross-examination Mr. Lockwood had made it appear at least highly probable that there had been a much closer relationship between ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... very doubtful. Pain, pain and more pain. Hours and hours—they seemed like years—of jolting over rough roads. Pawing-over by a fat, bearded surgeon, who may not have been intentionally brutal, but quite as likely may. A great desire to die, punctuated by occasional feeble spurts of wishing to live. Then more surgical man-handling, more jolting—in freight cars this time—a slow, miserable recovery, nurses who hated their patients and treated them as if they did, then, a prison camp, a German prison camp. Then horrors and starvation and ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... keeping time by a rude triumphal chant to the dance about the watch-fire, were mentally as children, with keen senses and eager imagination, but feeble reason, with fresh and vigorous emotions, but without elaborate language for these emotions. Swaying and shouting in rhythmic consent, they came slowly to the use of ordered words and, even then, could but have repeated the same phrases over and ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)

... sight. She is to be taught somewhat to understand the nothingness of the proportion which that little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in which God lives and loves;—and solemnly she is to be taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love them,—and is "for all who are ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... commander hoisted his flag; and if the hero himself did not take the form and features of a certain American midshipman, it was probably because there was a likeness of the subject of the Memoir opposite to the title-page; and the rather plain, rather melancholy, rather feeble traits of the English naval captain, could by no effort of imagination be confounded with the quiet strength and gentle manliness which Dolly had found in the straight brows and keen blue eyes and ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... over the fire and looked at the grate Dick had laboriously black-leaded that morning, and her thoughts were busy with the past. And her long sleeping conscience was awake, and she heard again the feeble voice of a dying man, "Send this letter to brother Richard at once. We quarrelled before he went off to Ironboro', but he'll come and see to things and take charge of little Dick. And there'll ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... descended a short flight of steps, and then again went straight forward to a door so decayed that only a rusted bolt, and one rust-eaten hinge, held it in place. Beyond this door, an abrupt turn in the passage, and then a flight of steps so precipitous that the feeble beam of his lantern could give the explorer no help in fathoming their depth; and when this lantern was lowered as far as it was in his power to do so, the flame burned blue and went out, killed by the noxious gases that stagnant ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... form of certificate ready for signature. When it was presented to the bridegroom he put up his hand for a moment as if to push back the shade, but, in dread of admitting even a feeble ray of light, gave up the attempt, took the pen and wrote Amyas Belamour where the clergyman pointed. Aurelia could hardly see what she was doing, and knew she had written very badly. The lawyer and housekeeper followed as witnesses; and the bridegroom, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... world, and gain his own soul?'" Most of such stories are usually of an old standing. A more recent one has been told me of a betheral of a royal burgh much decayed from former importance, and governed by a feeble municipality of old men, who continued in office, and in fact constituted rather the shadow than the substance of a corporation. A clergyman from a distance having come to officiate in the parish church, the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... the carpet now?" he greeted that lady, airily. "Writing another paper on 'The Ironic Note in Chivalry'? How about 'The Effect of the Pre-Raphaelites upon the Feeble-minded'? Or is it the 'Relation of the Child ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... country, in the towns, the farm houses, and the growing cities of the new country, people stirred and awakened. Thought and poetry died or passed as a heritage to feeble fawning men who also became servants of the new order. Serious young men in Bidwell and in other American towns, whose fathers had walked together on moonlight nights along Turner's Pike to talk ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... all, did our young Cossacks, disgusted with pillage, greed, and a feeble foe, and burning with the desire to distinguish themselves in presence of their chiefs, seek to measure themselves in single combat with the warlike and boastful Lyakhs, prancing on their spirited horses, with the sleeves ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... that we first met. Once again—oh me, once again!—at spare hours saved from my work, in the dull London light, in the poor London room, I sat by her side to guide the faltering touch, to help the feeble hand. Day by day I raised and raised the new interest till its place in the blank of her existence was at last assured—till she could think of her drawing and talk of it, and patiently practise it by herself, with some faint reflection of the innocent pleasure in my encouragement, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... beef extract, bouillon cubes or capsules, and the like. They are of no use as food except to stimulate a feeble stomach or furnish a spurt of energy, but invaluable for flavoring camp-made soups and stews when you are far away from beef. The powder called Oystero yields ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... call, not death, but life. Nor can it be otherwise. Such a death does not overtake one till after a very long course of years, and in consequence of an extreme weakness; it being only by slow degrees, that men grow too feeble to walk, and unable to reason, becoming blind, and deaf, decrepid, and full of every other kind of infirmity. Now I (by God's blessing) may be quite sure that I am at a very great distance from such a period. Nay, I have reason to think, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro

... to walk up and down, Ralph pointed out with considerable shrewdness that he did not suppose that his evidence was going to form the main ground of the attack on More; and that it would merely weaken the position to bring such feeble ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... how suddenly they sank? Was not that an exceedingly singular thing? I confess that I entertained some feeble hope of his final deliverance, when I saw him lash himself to the box, and commit himself ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... answer, laying her feeble hand on my wrist and continuing to look, not at me, but at the door. 'Listen, Gaston! Don't you hear? ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... his heart. This was Maria's brother. He had been confined to his berth most of the voyage, but was now better; and he had been walking up and down the deck with a friend. He looked pale and dejected, however, and seemed still quite feeble. ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... barren waste with the strength of the great river and take for the race the wealth of the land. The sound of human voices was flat and ineffectual in that age-old solitude, but the speakers knew that following their feeble voices would come the shouting, ringing, thundering chorus of the life that was to follow them into that silent land ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright



Words linked to "Feeble" :   powerless, frail



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